The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 2 December 2010

In the article below and one published in October, examining the merger of the US-based website The Daily Beast with Newsweek, there were a series of errors and basic failings of journalistic practice. We incorrectly said that the Daily Beast's audience was "tiny". The site's figures for unique users as measured by the Nielsen research organisation in August show that it had 1.656 million unique users; according to figures supplied by the Daily Beast citing another research firm, comScore, unique users in October were 2.9 million. It was also implied that Tatler was a Condé Nast title during Tina Brown's editorship – it was not. Only towards the end of her time as editor was the magazine acquired by Condé Nast. We also gave Brown's age as 57 when at the time the articles were published she was 56. In addition, both articles relied heavily on anonymous quotes and there was no formal attempt to approach the Daily Beast for a response to assertions in the articles. This is in breach of the Guardian's editorial code, which states that anonymous quotes may assist the reader but "if used lazily or indiscriminately … become a menace". There may be exceptional circumstances when anonymous pejorative quotes may be used, but they will be rare – and only after consultation with the senior editor of the day. The Daily Beast also asks us to point out that contrary to our assertion that the website has "no apparent business plan", there is such a plan and the site has secured 66 new advertising campaigns since the beginning of 2010.

The merger of Daily Beast and Newsweek – the culmination of a dance between IAC's chairman Barry Diller and the Newsweek owner Sidney Harman that's been going on since September – places Tina Brown back where she likes to be: in a power position in the New York media firmament.

The question is, can Brown, 57, revisit the glory years of buzz when she ruled over Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, or will this be another chapter in the spottier, post-empire years when she has flailed between Talk magazine, the cable news show Topic (A) with Tina Brown, a biography of Princess Diana and a short-lived weekly column in the Washington Post?

Observers of her career always note Brown's greatest successes tend to come when she has a sponsor with deep pockets. For years, this was SI Newhouse who lavished Brown with money and staff as she remade the Condé Nast titles. Under Brown, they never made money and, indeed, her departure from the New Yorker came during a dispute over costs.

But she then found another willing paymaster in Harvey Weinstein, flush with cash from Miramax films. That, though, was also the first time Brown sought to make a publication from scratch; the result was a kind of Sunday supplement, and confirmed the rule that supplements have no commercial viability of their own.

Indeed, the same could be said of the Daily Beast. Over its two years on the internet, the Beast has become a place for stories and commentary, but it has also found that stories and commentary do not necessarily build an audience or establish a viable business. The Daily Beast's numbers are tiny and advertisers remain stubbornly wedded to the idea of print.

So for Barry Diller, who has sunk $20m into the venture, a merger with Newsweek is a necessity: advertisers, he noted at a recent Beast conference, will pay more for print. Despite the Washington Post company selling it to Harman for just $1 over the summer, Newsweek is at least a publication with a long track record and, in theory, the kind of environment where Brown operates best.

After the announcement, she told New York public radio the merger did not mean she was turning her back on the web for print. "I'm looking back at print now with the new eyes of an expatriate who has been away and now can look back and see something with a very different point of view," she said. "Having done so much web news now, I can actually see what a magazine can offer."

It is hopeless, she continued, to think a magazine can compete with the web. What it can do, though, is offer more depth and explanation "unique in the marketplace" and a different kind of narrative rhythm. "In a magazine you can be more reflective."

But despite the rumblings of a print revival, Newsweek will be a very different publication to manage than Tatler, Vanity Fair or the New Yorker. For one thing, the lavish budgets for writers and photographers Brown was once used to are no more.

"It feels like a last chance for her," notes one former employee. "Almost anyone who spent as much as she did could produce a good magazine. The test for her now is whether she can turn Newsweek around in a structurally declining market."

And will nonagenarian Sidney Harman, who as proprietor wants an editorial voice, be able to stand up to her? Men clearly find this difficult – but not women. Last week, the former Hearst magazines boss Cathy Black recalled how she stood up to Brown and shut down Talk.

Brown's team were halfway through the next issue, and "weeping staff members" asked if they could finish it. "It was very tough, but I had to say no," Black said. "Two more weeks of work meant two more weeks of costs." She asked: "Did the staff hate me that day? Probably … But, unfortunately, life as an executive is about making tough decisions, not about being popular."

Nor has it been for Brown. At Vanity Fair she scandalised the staid world of Manhattan magazine publishing with what she called "high-class trash": a mix of glossy fashion, celebrity and reporting. Later, at the New Yorker, she was portrayed as a vulgarian and a "Stalin in high heels". She finally burned her bridges at Condé Nast, and a decade in the wilderness at Talk, CNBC and the Washington Post – where her column was famously criticised by the paper's ombudsman – followed.

So can the former Queen of Buzz buzz loudly enough once more and create one successful operation from two troubled ones? "I think of my career as four weddings and a funeral," she told public radio. The Daily Beast and Newsweek, she predicted, "will play together in a great syncopated rhythm."